


Winter Blues

by vanillanemo



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, mention of past fatal car crash, not much comfort tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 17:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12940143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillanemo/pseuds/vanillanemo
Summary: Piece 2 for AUideas Advent Calender 2017 - I Want To Dry Your Tears AUPrompt:Winter is always a hard time for Character A, so Character B isn’t completely surprised when they get a text from Character A, asking if Character B can come over. Character A supplies the blankets and food; all Character B needs to bring is their own warm body to snuggle.





	Winter Blues

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not especially happy with this but hey *shrugs* deadlines y'know?

The ‘ping’ of a phone interrupted the clatter of keys, and Toshiro looked away from his computer screen at the incoming message.

**Rangiku:** u doin anything? open invite, come over  & watch dumb holiday movies w/ hot choc & the good fruitcake.

A sad smile twitched at the corner of Toshiro’s lips as he picked up his phone. She was always the same - always too nervous to come right out and say she was lonely, even after all these years.

**Toshiro:** Not really doing much. Hot chocolate is conditional upon me being the one to make it. Be there in twenty minutes, need me to get anything on the way?

Once the message was sent, he put his phone back down and returned to his computer, quickly finishing the sentence he was writing before saving and closing the manuscript. By the time he had put the computer on standby, put his shoes on and grabbed his bag (which was packed with spare pyjamas, toiletries and her favourite butterscotch lollies - he’d known this was coming), there was a reply.

**Rangiku:** motivation 4 endless cuddles :) see u in twenty

Snorting, Toshiro slipped his phone into his bag, put his jacket on and wrapped a scarf around his neck. Keys in hand, he left his apartment, flicking the lights off as he left and locking the door. Then it was a simple matter of down the stairs, into the car, drive a few miles, park in her open garage and walk up to Rangiku’s front door.

He knocked briskly, and from inside there was a call of “just a minute!”

Surely enough, a minute later, the door was opened and a blanket burrito stood inside, his best friend’s face peeking out from inside.

“Hey! Come in,” she said, stepping away to let him inside, the corners of her fluffy pink blanket trailing behind her. He smiled at her as he came in, taking his jacket and boots off while she closed the door, but internally he was sighing. The pink blanket only came out of the closet when it was really bad.

“I got out what you need to make the hot chocolate, but I haven’t actually done it yet.” She followed him into the kitchen, and he could tell from her tone that she was pouting. “I don’t know why you don’t let me cook things for you, Toshiro.”

He sighed. “Well, hint number one, should maybe be that you think pickles and ketchup should go in hot chocolate,” he said, staring at the assortment of ingredients on her kitchen counter. Toshiro bypassed most of them, just picking out the cocoa powder, sugar, milk and vanilla.

“Do you have salt?” he asked, turning on the stove and adding water to the small pot she’d gotten out for him.

Sniffing, she said “I still can’t believe you put salt in the hot chocolate.” Despite her words, she went to the cupboard and got him the bag of cooking salt, before putting away the rest of the food.

“Okay, one, this is my grandmother’s recipe, so if you’ve got problems, you’d have to take it up with her, and two, you’ve often said this is delicious, and the salt is an important part of it, so screw you.”

“I would _never_ tell your grandmother that I have problems with her recipe, she’s too sweet to say something like that to,” Rangiku said, gasping. “And you’re right, it is yum, I just don’t get why the salt helps that.”

Shrugging, he replied, “I don’t either, but I’ve tried it without the salt and let me assure you, it makes a difference.” As he turned the pot down to let the mixture simmer, she got two mugs out and put them on the bench, ready for the creamy beverage. “Have you got marshmallows?” he asked.

“Yeah, in the cupboard.” She gestured vaguely with an arm, the other rearranging her blanket so that it draped over her shoulders like a shawl, and he went to get the sweet treats. While he finished up the drinks, she got the fruitcake out of the fridge and sliced it up, laying it all out on a plate. Within a few minutes, they were seated in front of the TV, arguing over what to watch.

“Home and Alone is a classic, Toshiro!”

“Yeah, but we watched that only a few months ago! The Nightmare Before Christmas is better and we haven’t watched it together in years!”

“I know you well enough that I can say you probably watched it last week!”

“So what? Watching it alone and with friends are entirely different experiences.”

“You can quote the entire thing from memory! It’s not worth watching again. What about Love Actually?”

“You’ll cry and you know it, Rangiku.”

“And what would be wrong with that?”

Eventually they decided on ‘The Santa Clause’. An hour into the movie saw them curled into each other, empty mugs on the coffee table in front of them, with fruitcake crumbs and butterscotch wrappers scattered around. Rangiku’s cat, Haineko, was snuggled under Toshiro’s arm (to his discontent - the little beast hated him and made sure he knew it, but was perfectly behaved in front of her owner).

“I miss him,” she said suddenly, her soft words almost lost under the noise of the TV. Toshiro didn’t need to see her to know that tears were running steadily down her cheeks.

“I know,” he said, holding her closer. “I know.”

“That stupid fucking asshole. I fucking hate him. Didn’t even... didn’t even stop to see what he’d hit. Just drove off and... and left Gin there on the ground. How fucking dare he!”

Her hand was at her neck now, clutching at her necklace and the ring that hung there, her late husband’s ring that matched the one she still wore on her left hand. Her husband, killed in a hit-and-run during winter five years ago.

Gin Ichimaru and Rangiku Matsumoto had lived their whole lives together in milestones set in winter.

They’d first met in winter, she an orphan child abandoned in the freezing cold, he a runaway from an abusive home. He’d offered to let her into his little shelter, in an alleyway behind a dumpster, discarded junk protecting them from the fury of the coldest months of the year. They’d shared a blanket stolen from a thrift store, pink and fluffy, though it dulled with dirt over the harsh weeks they lived on the streets.

One day they were caught stealing food, and put into the foster care system.

They bounced around from home to home, refusing to be separated, which made placing them a nightmare for their case worker, but eventually they were permanently adopted by a married couple, the wife too ill to have children of her own. The paperwork was officially settled in January, the next winter milestone.

Despite all attempts to the contrary, they refused to sleep in separate beds, and their parents got sick of waking up to find that one of them (usually Gin) had snuck into the other’s room overnight. They’d find both children in a far too small bed, wrapped closely around one another, her head on his chest and their pink fluffy blanket covering them both. Eventually, they gave in and upgraded the bed to a queen size, and allowed them both to go to bed together.

They went everywhere together, did everything together.

They’d been childhood sweethearts, a picture perfect love story. But now pictures were all that were left.

Toshiro hadn’t been especially close to Rangiku when it happened, only just beginning to consider her a friend. They shared a class at college, she as a mature age student, he a prodigy child who’d graduated high school early.

She’d pretty much instantly adopted him as a younger brother, but he’d been awkward and shy, and so hadn’t been particularly open around her for quite some time. He’d met Gin a few times, and though he found the man to be intelligent, good-hearted and extremely likeable, he would not have considered Gin to be anything more than an acquaintance.

He and Rangiku were at a study session in the library along with a few of their other classmates when she got the phone call. She stepped outside to take it, and they’d continued with their work, but a few minutes later, Toshiro looked out the window to see Rangiku crying, clutching her phone to her chest, and in a moment of uncharacteristic confidence, he went to see what was wrong.

He’d held her while she cried, and he did the same for months afterwards. It had only been when spring arrived that she started to make some kind of recovery.

But every year, during the coldest months, she got worse again. And year after year, winter after winter, he found himself spending night after night at her house, at what had been _their_ house. Holding her in her arms as she sobbed her heart out onto his chest.

Every year she got better. She cried on fewer days, for slightly less time. And every year, Toshiro got guiltier, the secret he was keeping from her eating away at him a little more every time.

Even still, he’d sworn to himself that he’d never tell _anyone_ about the older brother who’d left him behind.

Even if that someone was Toshiro’s sister-in-law.


End file.
